Response from Kession Capital: “We request that you cease and desist and remove this article from the internet”

Yesterday, REDD-Monitor wrote a post about a network of scam companies. Not all companies with the word “Oakmount” in their names are scams. But the article featured several that are.

Glenn Jamie King links several of these companies. He’s the director of Oakmount Global Management and Oakmount and Partners.

Following the post, “A.N.” left a comment explaining that Glenn King had been arrested by the Metropolitan Police for his role in an oil scam. King is currently out on bail. “A.N.” sent me what I believe is a reliable confirmation of his statement. A separate source has also stated that King is currently on bail.

King is also director of a company called Centrium Capital Markets.

Centrium Capital Markets’ website explains that the company is not registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, but is an appointed representative of Kession Capital, which is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority.

In yesterday’s post, I noted that, “The FCA apparently doesn’t mind that Kession is lending its FCA permissions to other companies.” Indeed, appointed representatives are a feature, not a bug, with the FCA. Kession is not the only company offering this service. Here’s how the FCA describes “appointed representatives” on its website:

What is an Appointed Representative (AR)?

The definition of an Appointed Representative is set out in Section 39 of The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) and is contained in the Glossary to the Handbook.

An AR is a firm / person who is party to a contract with an authorised firm permitting them to carry on certain regulated activities under their Part IV permission (see SUP 12.2 and PERG 5.13).

However, an AR can only carry on those regulated activities which are specified in the AR Regulations (see PERG 5.13.4 G).

If an AR wishes to carry on regulated activities wider than this scope, then it must obtain authorisation in its own right.

Here’s a full list of Kession’s appointed representatives. Obviously, I am not suggesting that all of these companies are dodgy – but some do have more than a faint smell of rat about them, not just Centrium Capital Markets.

In April 2015, Spain’s Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores warned that Ethika Global Consulting (another Kession appointed representative) and its director Manuel Nogueron Resalt was not authorised to provide investment advice in Spain, despite a company address in Barcelona.

This morning, I received an email from Steven Garner, Compliance Office at Kession Capital. Garner requests that I remove the entire post from the Internet. That seems more than a little unreasonable since most of the post isn’t about either Kession Capital or its clients.

Garner states that, “There are a number of inaccurate statements in the article and some of the statements appear to be defamatory.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain which statements are inaccurate and/or defamatory. If there are any factually incorrect statements in the post, I am, of course, happy to correct them.

Yesterday’s post included a screenshot of part of Kession Capital’s website. This was reproduced for the purposes of comment, research and news reporting. It’s a screenshot of a website, not a reproduction of a work of art. It’s only a very small part of the Kession Capital website. And I made absolutely no money whatsoever by posting the screenshot. The screenshot therefore falls under fair use, not copyright violation.

There are a number of inaccurate statements in the article and some of the statements appear to be defamatory. The article also uses an unauthorised screen shot of our website, kession.com, which is copyrighted and EU trade marked to Kession Capital Limited.

Kession Capital Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and takes its regulatory responsibilities very seriously. Kession is required by the FCA to ensure that all customers and investors are treated fairly and we and the industry appreciate your efforts in reporting scams and boiler rooms. If you have firm evidence of mis-doings by the individuals and firms mentioned in your article, I would be grateful if you could contact me directly at the above email address (steven.garner@kession.com) so we can collectively review and take appropriate action and inform the FCA.

In the meantime, we request that you cease and desist and remove this article from the internet (e.g website, twitter, facebook, blog etc) within 24 hours or we, and the clients you mention in the article, will take legal action against you and the website concerned.

Hi Chris,
Thanks for the Kession warning. I bought Carbon Credits from MH Carbon in 2011/12 period for about £25k. I have since mentally written them off. Does Kession connection with MH Carbon go back to that period?
I am currently trying to do due diligence research on a company called Investor Protectors, apparently part of a Bein Global Ltd. Have you come across them? they claim to be amassing a register of carbon certificates to attract bulk buyers. they have approached me to add my credits to the register for a fee of £200. Any tips? I suspect all telephone approaches these days.
Bryan Hiscock

@Bryan Hiscock – Kession Capital is an FCA regulated company. It lends its FCA permissions to other companies through the appointed representatives mechanism. This is all allowed under the FCA system, as I explained above.

Kession has no connection with MH Carbon. One of King’s companies, Oakmount Global Management, was one of the companies on a list of suppliers/custodians of carbon credits provided by MH Carbon Nominees in November 2013, after MH Carbon went into voluntary liquidation. Here’s a screenshot of the list (click on the image to go to an archived copy of the MH Carbon Nominees website):

Centrium Capital Markets (a company co-founded by King in April 2013) became an appointed representative of Kession Capital in September 2014. At the time King was company secretary and David Hyman was director of Centrium Capital Markets.

I have been contacted (cold call) by someone giving his name as Jared Kararia, representing a company called Magne Sante (director Robert Mark) offering to recover the substantial moneys I invested in carbon credits. Web information on the company is found at http://www.msrpr, Rpr stands for Relentless Pursuit and Recovery.The sales pitch claims that Magne Sante will relentlessly pursue the scammers who sold me carbon credits until they cough up their ill gotten gains, while I will make a down payment in advance of £10,000 to M S which will be a percentage of what will be recovered by them. It appears to be a pretty transparent scam, but I would be grateful for confirmation (especially from Chris) and information about any messages about this company that anyone else may have received. Cheers, Jeremy

@Chris Langley Investor Protectors provides a variety of services, chiefly it is the purpose of IP to help people who have been the victim of scams and we have numerous examples of how IP has; prevented Investors from sending money for bogus investments, successfully clawed back monies sent by investors to bogus investments.

We find that people who subscribe to our services benefit in several ways, not least because 9 times out of 10, instead of sending of sending thousands of pounds in a follow up recovery room scam, they actually contact us first to validate the offer being made to them. At this point we highlight the flaws in the tempting offer and expose the elements of the entity making the offer that are completely bogus.

We charge a reasonable fee for the service we provide and we are certain, in nearly every case, subscribers have saved more by avoiding further scams as a result of our intervention.

We do not cold call, we communicate only with people on our subscribed mailing list and subscribers are free to unsubscribe at any time.

We cannot help everyone and we do turn people away or refer as appropriate.

In response to the post by “Jeremy Lane” in relation to Mr Lane being contacted by one of our agents to introduce our services and direct his attention to our web information.

Firstly it is impossible for us to say whether or not we are in a position to represent the interests of a potential client based on a single telephone conversation. What should have happened is you are invited to view our public website, and then if you are so inclined we may enter into further discussions to look more closely at your financial losses.

Our service provision is not specific to any type of swindle or so-called asset as we only focus on monies which has been lost through any type of misleading investment offering. (No one in our organization is authorised to discuss fees except myself as the Managing Agent and founder of the organization.)

In every instance where a potential client expresses an interest in our service provision we would conduct an internal preliminary investigation whilst at the same time inviting the potential client to view the section of our website which is password protected. Within this section there is much more detail about who we are, as well as our advocacy and professional backgrounds and the structure of the business and associated divisions and companies.

I obviously take exception to MAGNE SANTE being described as a “pretty transparent scam”. However I am mindful that every potential client of MAGNE SANTE has by definition been mislead or scammed previously, so it makes sense to be ultra-cautious when presented with a possible recovery solution; after 5 years in this very difficult sector I get that more than most.

In closing I would simply say this; it is easy for people to make false allegations on line about a company or individual they know nothing about simply because they know nothing about them. It is also easy for other companies to come along and jump on the bandwagon so as to talk up how wonderful their company is and how they are so pure and credible. But who actually will pursue these culprits and take back the money they have effectively stolen? All I keep hearing is how to be so wonderfully wise after the event, or how this or that wonderful firm will not cold-call a person. If it wasn’t so serious it would almost be funny; the culprits that have taken millions of pounds from people cold-call, intimidate, lie, cheat and steal to get as much money as they can. These are the facts, and most of them get away with it. Most people are not going talk about being swindled at a dinner party, many don’t even discuss it with family members; so there it goes lots of monies taken fraudulently in many cases, and nobody knows because we are all too polite to ask the question or make a telephone call. Just a point regarding MAGNE SANTE; we only discuss the pursuit & recovery of monies lost not where anyone should be investing their money; we are pursuit and recovery specialists and experts.

The truth is that over 1 Billion per year is being scammed from UK based private investors each year, and this is a conservative estimate as many believe that many of these scams go unreported due to embarrassment and a feeling of stupidity, (unfounded I might add), and sometimes vulnerability. I know of investors that have become ill, I know of investors that have become withdrawn, I know of investors who have actually taken their own lives, all as a result of being scammed and mislead into parting with thousands of pounds of their money and passing that money to culprit firms and culprit individuals. This is how serious we know this can be; this is not a ‘jolly’, this is not trivial, this is peoples livelihoods, their well-being, their emotional and mental health, and sometimes their lives!

I am proud of the work we do at MAGNE SANTE and I expect us to continue to do this work in this difficult sector for many years to come. I am happy to discuss with anyone all aspects of our services provision so as to provide clarity. However I would urge anyone not to levy such an acquisition as MAGNE SANTE being a scam, as to be that would be despicable and a disgrace and that is not and never will be who we are.

I’m looking at a City outfit called Swan Securities & Investments, Ltd., linked to Kession Capital in the same way. The Director is a Neil Simon Bongard, who’s apparently on the FCA’s Financial Services Register, buy seems to appear out of the blue as the Director of Swan when its created in 2013 and there seems to be no trace of him that I can find before this, & the company’s website http://www.swan-investments.com is a little quiet about who its management team is.

I have been contacted by Swan Securities and Investments Ltd wanting to sell me shares in Thorn Medical. Thorn seem to be a respectable company which Swan say will list shortly on both FTSE and Nasdaq. Swan say thay have bought a block of Thorn shares which they are selling on to clients. Does anybody have experience of dealing with Swan?

@John C – That’s a bad sign. Here’s what Aviva plc has to say about this sort of thing:

Aviva advises as follows:

Reject cold calls – If you’ve been cold called with an offer to buy and sell shares, chances are it’s a high risk investment or a scam. You should treat the call with extreme caution. The safest thing to do is to hang up.

The FCA put out a leaflet about share fraud in 2013 (click on the image to see the pdf file):

None of this proves that Swan Securities and Investments is a boiler room operation. Nevertheless, I think it’s worth contacting the Financial Conduct Authority about the telephone call you had with them.

James Ian Gillinham has recently created a company which conned over 150 people out of thousands of pounds, he has also married 3 times for sole perpose of stealing money. The police are now involved. I have people on the phone to me crying because they have lost their intire pension. He is very clever and a serial Lier. The company he created was called, choice option then changed there name to BCC option. They lied and said they had a CySec license, they lied and said they had insurance. He is responsible for destroying people’s lives.

Very interesting reading on here about Neil Bongard, Swan Securities and associates.

Tentacles spread further when you draw in another major associate Patrick E Moran; an Irishman (dob:22/08/75) who claims to be a solar expert and alternative energy investment expert, a solicitor and an all round fine upstanding fellow.

The reality being, sadly in most cases revealed ‘after the event, that he has no solar expertise whatsoever, he has at least 17 failed very short-term directorships behind him including for ELEMENTAL ENERGY PLC, RUSSBOROUGH CONSULTING LIMITED, AEGIS WIND FINANCE (NO. 2) LIMITED, AEGIS RENEWABLE ENERGY SERVICES LIMITED, Venturetricity Ltd, Blue Coast Global Global Investments Limited, Solas Power Limited and Glas Energy Investment Limited to name just few that spring to mind, at least four major alternative energy investment scams with multiple millions of GBP disappeared into the wind all under his ‘management’ and in regard to him being a solicitor, in 2010 the Irish Law Society struck him off and seized his files: “…In the matter of Patrick E Moran, a solicitor practising as Moran Solicitors, 33 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, and in the matter of the Solicitors Acts 1954-2008 [10159/DT122/09] Law Society of Ireland (applicant) Patrick E Moran (respondent solicitor). On 20 April 2010, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found the respondent solicitor guilty of misconduct in his practice as a solicitor.” .

REDDisms:

“REDD is the most mind twistingly complex endeavor in the carbon game. The fact is that REDD involves scientific uncertainties, technical challenges, heterogeneous non-contiguous asset classes, multi-decade performance guarantees, local land tenure issues, brutal potential for gaming and the fact that getting it wrong means that scam artists will get unimaginably rich while emissions don’t change a bit.”